How do you move on from the death of a loved one?
by a mountain of gideon's scones
Summary: in the chamber, ginny dies. so what happens to the rest of the people in her life after it? read this story to find out how harry, ron, hermione, the weasleys and the rest of them move on. story better than summary i hope!


**AU. What happens if Ginny died in the Chamber of Secrets back in her first year? How does this change the characters of Harry, Ron and Hermione etc and the relationships etc between them?**

**They are in 5****th**** year, just before the time when he discovered his feelings in the book, but old enough for them to begin getting into relationships.**

**A/N – Voldemort has returned, the Order together (pretty much the same as OotP with very few differences besides Umbridge is slightly softer and no anti-kissing etc degrees)**

*FLASHBACK*

Harry is fighting the basilisk in the Chamber of Secrets. He beats it, but it takes an extremely long time – longer than Ginny has. Just before Riddle turns fully human, Harry stabs the diary with the basilisk fang and Riddle begins to disappear. Harry runs over to Ginny to help her: surely her strength must be returning? But she is completely cold. He presses his head to her chest and there is no movement; she isn't breathing either.

Harry starts CPR in vain and continues until Fawkes comes along with Ron, Fawkes having helped Ron clear the stack of rubble.

"GINNY NO!" Ron yells at the sight of his baby sister lying there. Harry looks up, then stops compressions, exhausted, having been administrating CPR for almost 40 minutes.

They both console each other, then just get it together enough for them to carry Ginny's body from the Chamber, out past the skin and the rocks and (with Lockhart) up the tunnel via Fawkes.

They emerge in the girls bathroom, and Moaning Myrtle drifts into sight, sees Ginny and screams before gliding off to fetch Dumbledore and Madam Pomfrey who administers further CPR before giving up.

Harry and Ron both collapse with the shock of losing a friend, a sibling, and Dumbledore helps them to his office, where Ron's parents sit, waiting to see their daughter. Dumbledore breaks the news to the Weasleys and they are lost in grief for their only daughter.

An awful day. Harry blames himself for not fighting faster, more efficiently, thinking _if only, if only_.

*HARRY WAKES UP*

Harry awakes from the nightmare that he has had nearly every night for the past 3 years (most of the other nights he has prophetic and other dreams about Voldemort) in a thick lathery sweat that coats him from head to toe. He looks around the dorm: he had eye treatment at St Mungos to correct his vision – Ginny had always liked his glasses so he did everything he could to get rid of reminders of her, and notices the 5 other boys in the room – Ron, Seamus, Dean, Neville and Richard Morfoot – a new boy at the beginning of 4th year and a member of Harry's 'gang'.

Everyone of them seem peaceful… besides Ron. Just like every time Harry wakes up from the nightmare, he sees Ron thrashing around in his sleep, no longer waking, just moving erratically, remembering the death of his sister.

Ron is dreaming of the moment he saw his sister lying on the floor in the water, moving only because of Harry's furious CPR. Every night he can see her face before his eyes, screaming for help but then dying painfully. He moves around, trouncing in his bed unable to wake from this nightmare anymore, due to the volume of the nightmare: every night; never a night off. He thinks, he should have saved her, if only he'd done _something_, she may still be alive. That's what his mother told him every time she got drunk after Ginny's death before….

Hermione is regretting the fact she succumbed to the basilisk: if she hadn't, she could have helped Ginny. Or even before that… if she had managed to get it out of her, the thing that was bugging her. Hermione doesn't think about this _every _night, not at all, just random times when she overhears Ron and Harry talking about… that night, or if she does something and realises that Ginny loved it. Every time she thinks of Ginny, she feels a wave of despair – weakening slightly over time, but still strong enough to knowkc the breath out of her.

All the Weasleys feel the strain of losing one of them every day: every morning they think of the lost soul who brought so much light to the house they call the Burrow. None more so than Mrs Weasley did: she completely lost it after the death of her only daughter, drinking heavily and blaming Ron, Mr Weasley, everyone but herself. She did, every day until…

Mr Weasley was grief-stricken entirely at the loss of the only time he would be walking down the aisle, but he held it together for his family – he tried to move on with his life for the sake of his family and the hope that it would bring his wife back to him.

People say that they are all stupid, just idiots, for mourning someone who died so long ago, especially if they are claiming that Voldemort has returned: surely the energy that goes into their grief should be channelled into 'fighting Voldemort' – but they don't get how deep the knife went when she died.

So how are they moving on? Well, in all senses, the trio (and their new friends Richard Morfoot and Beth O'Grady) _have_ moved on: they laugh, they joke, they work – during the day, they have progressed. But nights are the hard part… that's where they slip up.

For now.

Follow the moving on after the death of a loved one in this fanfic: it may be gradual but they will move on…

**This chapter is just an intro to the characters in this story – the next will be better, I promise!**

**Please review and tell me your opinion on who should be with who? Eg who with Harry, who with Ron and who with Hermione (if anyone at all) and any other characters.**


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